Note: You need to have CPAN manually configured prior to running cat-install. As shown above, you should automatically receive a prompt for this when you first run perl -MCPAN -e shell. You can re-run the configuration script by typing o conf init at the cpan> prompt.

Optional: The remaining steps of the installation could run significantly faster if you configure a fast mirror that uses HTTP vs. FTP (both transfer data at the same rate once the transfer is in progress, but HTTP connects much more quickly... and a Catalyst installation involves many connections). If you want to change the selection(s) you made during the "manual configuration" process above, you can manually add a single URL. To prepend a new URL to the front of the list, use the unshift option to o conf:

cpan> o conf urllist unshift http://www.perl.com/CPAN/

Where http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ is replaced by a nearby, HTTP-based mirror. You can get a list of all mirrors (including where they are located, their bandwidth, and their update frequency) at http://www.perl.com/CPAN/MIRRORED.BY.

Then, be sure to save your changes (or they will be lost the next time you restart the CPAN shell):

cpan> o conf commit

You can view the current settings with o conf urllist (or just o conf to view all settings):

If you want to get started quickly with Catalyst, Shadowcat provides an
installer script that will automate most of the process of installing it
for you. Please bear in mind that this script is currently considered
beta quality; we don't think it will eat your system but we make no
guarantee of that.
First, you'll need -
* Perl, 5.8.1+ (if you're on windows, get it from Active State)
* make of some sort. On unix/linux you should already have one. On
windows get nmake from Microsoft.
* A compiler. On unix/linux you should already have one. On windows,
get the latest Dev-C++ beta.
* All three of the above in your PATH for whatever shell you're using
* A configured CPAN.pm. perl -MCPAN -e shell should get CPAN to walk
you through the configuration process
* Module::Build. Active State kindly include this for you.
Ok, now that your environment is set up, download the installer from
this link, open a command prompt in the directory you downloaded it to
and run perl cat-install. By the time it exits, you should have a full
Catalyst install.
If anything goes wrong, please send the full build log and the output of
perl -V to cat-install (at) shadowcatsystems.co.uk so we can try and
resolve your issue.

Type wget http://www.shadowcatsystems.co.uk/static/cat-install to retrieve a copy of the cat-install script.

Type vi cat-install to open the installer script, then insert the following lines at the bottom of the file (after the install('Catalyst'); line):

Tip: You may want to enable logging of the output that cat-install generates as it runs -- it can be useful if you need to troubleshoot a failure. The log will generate almost 1 MB of output.

Note: Once the perl cat-install is complete, you may want to rerun the command to check the status of the packages listed in <cat-install>. Ideally, everything should return a nameis up to date message. If any packages try to re-install, the you could need to manually install the package with the force option. Also, look for new optional dependences that cat-install was not able to automatically handle. You can address these by manually installing the dependency and then re-running perl cat-install.

In some cases you may wish to install an earlier version of a module. For example, say that the latest version of Module::Install is 0.64 and you want to install 0.63. The following command under perl -MCPAN -e shell:

cpan> install A/AD/ADAMK/Module-Install-0.63.tar.gz

You should now have a functioning Catalyst installation with the modules and plugins required to run the Catalyst tutorial.